Japanese firm wants a real-life Jurassic Park with world's biggest, most realistic robot dinosaurs

midian182

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It’s extremely unlikely that scientists will ever be able to create an actual Jurassic Park with living dinosaurs, which is probably a good thing, considering how the creatures often run rampant and eat the guests in the movies. So what’s the next best option? How about a park full of Westworld-style robot dinos.

That’s the dream of Kazuya Kenemaru, the CEO of Japanese company On-Art Corp., which unveiled the world’s biggest walking and moving dinosaur robots yesterday.

Unlike the synthetic androids from HBO's Westworld, the machines here are controlled by humans inside the suits. And while similar models have been around for a while, these dinosaurs are about 30 pounds lighter and measure up to 26 feet in height.

During the performance at a downtown Tokyo hotel, a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex was the first to enter the hall, roaring toward the crowd before biting the head of a caretaker and swinging him around.

The T-Rex was then joined by other dinos, including Allosaurus and Raptors. The creatures appear more realistic than those that had come before, thanks to the use of carbon fiber materials and the way they've been modeled from fossilized skeletons, according to the company.

"The fact that we have been creating living things, the desire we have had to want to truly experience dinosaurs, and living things, to draw that out, these are things that spurred us on,” said Kenemaru.

"We are striving to create dinosaurs that make people feel as though they are invisible, through how real the dinosaur's breathing and movements are."

There are 12 of the new dinosaurs being used for various events across Japan. The CEO said his ultimate ambition is to create a “Dino-A-Park” like the one seen in the Steven Spielberg movie, where visitors can walk among the mechanical beasts without fear of being eaten.

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It’s extremely unlikely that scientists will ever be able to create an actual Jurassic Park with living dinosaurs

That's like saying it's extremely unlikely scientists will ever find an efficient way to get people to the moon. Things like this are a matter of understanding genetics, a field that has been advancing swiftly since the early 1900s.
 
It’s extremely unlikely that scientists will ever be able to create an actual Jurassic Park with living dinosaurs

That's like saying it's extremely unlikely scientists will ever find an efficient way to get people to the moon. Things like this are a matter of understanding genetics, a field that has been advancing swiftly since the early 1900s.

Yep, just the other day I was reading about a new technique that allows them to modify DNA. Recreating Dinos doesn't seem too far fetched.
 
Birds evolved from therapod dinosaurs and as such still have many of the old genetic markers of their dinosaur past albeit turned off. Experiments have been done that managed to turn on some of these dormant genes in chicken embryos,giving them therapod features such as bony tails and teeth. To me, science creating dinosaurs in the future isn't that far fetched at all. The ethics of doing so are another matter entirely.
 
I've taken my young daughter to many different dinosaur experiences. Some might have been worth the trip while others were ridiculously bad. Most of the time unless you see something like this when it's brand new you get shafted from improper maintenance and immersion is broken if there is any to begin with. Just my .02.
 
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